Living Roundup: Functional Foods, Dirt as Energy & More

Every week we highlight the best articles, blogs, news, videos and interesting Web tidbits to help you live green, be healthy, and connect with your sense of spirituality. Read our roundup for info that just helps you live better.

Top Ten Functional Food Trends

Foods that may provide a health benefit beyond basic nutrition, identified as functional foods, are becoming a key part of everyday life. Here are the top 10 trends in functional foods. (Inner Idea)

The Allergen-Free Life: Demand Meets Reality

If you are one of the tens of thousands of Americans who suffer from environmental allergies, you know how difficult it can be just to get a breath of fresh air. Yet when it comes to providing for sufferers, builders in Europe seem to be showing up their American counterparts. (ABC News)

Could dirt be the next green energy source?

A team from Harvard has been named amongst the winners of the World Bank’s Lighting Africa 2008 Development Competition. Their idea is to develop a series of dirt based fuel cells that are capable of lighting high efficiency LED lamps. Their goal is to help solve the energy crisis in Africa. (Inhabitat)

Intent Shapes Environment, Environment Shapes Life

Sometimes we talk about the environment without considering what it is. There are two: the natural environment; and the physical, local environment that surrounds each of us in our day-to-day life – our room, our home, our streets and parks. (WorldChanging)

Play at Your Peak

Let yoga show you how to become one with whatever you do through flow states, so you can perform at your best and enjoy yourself more. Flow states can arise in any endeavor that requires a refinement of attention and subtle physical and mental skillfulness. (YogaJournal)

Acceptance As Giving

Giving and receiving are part of the same cycle, and we each give and receive in our own ways. But we can lose our balance when we try to be too controlling on either side of the cycle. (DailyOM)

VIDEO: Avoid Reliance on the Evil Sun with Clean Coal

Cartoonist Mark Fiore does another one of his wonderful parodies, blaming the hot sun burning hundreds of thousands every year and for causing disease-carrying wind. After all, we all know that clean coal is the answer to all of our problems and will eliminate the need to rely on that trillion-degree, dare we say NUCLEAR sun. (TreeHugger)